Just a little check in here again, WordPress. If you’ve been wondering where we went to, don’t worry – we haven’t gone away. In fact, things are going from strength to strength with us – it’s just that we’re now inhabiting a slightly different corner of the Internet – www.dagdapublishing.co.uk – and we’d love to see you over there. We’ve got more new poetry to inspire you from some of the best new writers around, 3 new anthologies you can be a part of, and a few new books on our shop that you can get your hands on. All in all, we’ve been pretty busy. The only thing we’re missing is you.

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I’m a twenty one year old writer that drinks. I like to read in the garden with my little tabby cat for company. I’m in the last year of an English and Creative writing degree, and the only thing I’ve learnt from writing seminars is that I really hate writing seminars.

What are you reading at the moment?

Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald.

What inspires you as a writer?

Humans, snippets of conversation I hear as I walk by, animals, intoxication, dreams, death. Everything I think. Sometimes the best ideas leap out of the most mundane tasks.

Which writers do you most aspire to be like?

I’m always trying to find the treasure glinting in the filth. And I think that no one does that better than Bukowski. But that said, more than anyone I’d love to have a fraction of Hemingway’s tailored emotional power. That man was and is the master of evocative prose through minimal means.

What really made you decide to write poetry in the first place?

I first started writing poetry around the age of twelve. Most of it was spiky hormonal dross – I was a loner and very moody and found poetry to be a therapeutic outlet. My best friend moved away around that time and I made no effort to connect with anyone for a while, I just put up walls and wrote some shockingly bad rhymes.

Share one of your all-time favourite poems with us.

Book Ends by Tony Harrison. Brilliant and sad. A lot of it relates to my relationship with my own dad.

If there is one tip you can give to a fellow writer, what would it be?

Don’t stop writing. If you get rejected, keep writing. If you get your work published, keep writing. Once you’re in the swing of writing often, you’re unstoppable. You can only get better.

Where would you like to be as a writer in a few years time?

Preferably alive, and in print. I’m currently fleshing out the seed of a novel, so I’d like to beat that into submission and get it written in the next year or so. I’d love to put out more poetry too, as that’s the form closest to my heart.

Finally, share one of your favourite quotes with us.

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

*****

Sean Macro is the author of our latest release, “Happy Hour At The Misery Bar”, which is available now from Amazon and Lulu.com – Pick up a copy of this debut poetry collection by Sean to support this great new writer. This interview was featured first of all in our newsletter, if you want to be the first to get content like this, sign up here to connect with us via our mailing list. – Link

She stood hair of scarlet
as a beacon on that lonely hillside.
Beneath the tilt of clouds,
more black than grey.
Silent, void in all her qualities.
Her derelict stance
made me stop – to glance.
In openness
I appealed
If one falls; if –
What then.
Her body faltered –
China pale descending petals
kissing cold the granite of whitest
white.
Who will light me a candle
on this barren night.
For in this bitter-sweet reek of living alone
I am about to come undone.
My deceits left me all mislaid
I battled hard those disliked
tendrils of ache.
Willed to purge them with my bileYet should I hold my self
in tainted censure –
Are men not born ill-fated; weak
so open to persuasion.
Should lacklustre climates;
gather about our feet.
Then surely, we can seek out
that warmth, so absent from the hearth.
May well my love, have blazed
her hair of red.
Alas, for me; it never seemed
to warm our bed…

Todays piece comes from Poppy Taylor, who we have featured before (under the name Poppy Scarlett). This piece of free verse to us has a little bit of Emily Dickinson in it. Melancholy, introspective, and searching for something. A stunning piece. Leave comments below and share this piece with the world.

Compressed.
The weight bares down on every cell
I hear their walls tear, and collapse.
Microscopic destruction.
How can the smallest of things seem so large?
We have been here before, my cells and I.
Pain measured in nerve, and in membrane.
The mind chases itself
into dark corners.
Ice-sharp synapses beg to be dulled.
If receptors could alchemise,
weight into words.
They could tell you how I feel,
but a problem divided, is still a problem shared.
And I have no cells left to sacrifice.

Alone with my thoughts
beneath this driving rain
bathed in halogen
an unobserved spectre,
an image of nothingness,
solitary
as the silent cars pass by
sterile, driver-less
toward destinations,
I wonder where,
to be swallowed in the night,
as am I.

I see you like smoke in the room,
Drifting thinly away from me
And forever just out of reach.
Rest your head my dear,
Let your worries wash away,
Just as you wash into my dreams.

I dream in flirtations,
Of doom and lust,
Of love and skies,
And I prepared for the onslaught of life,
With its grey drones scraping you,
And the faceless masses who watch you with
Scrutinising eyes and minds far removed.

The swarming feelings informed me
As I sat in my castle once,
Safe and far away from the battle field,
As today was not my day!
Dashing dyes, reds, greens and golds,
The sweet sap wakes from its slumber,
Thoughtful, ever flourishing and wild, like boars,
The Narcissus coughed the first tune of spring for me!

Colourful dreams swooned in toward me,
Like Vashka and the soul-searching sun of summer,
A lake, a tree,
The silent destiny of me,
In a dark green stance against the ripples,
That roll on the banks and reeds…

Like life in books and photos,
We are as we shall be,
No mistaking or hiding this time,
Just the gritty truth of human-kind
Spread out on a mile-long canvas
For all to see and remember,
In legendary scenes of spring,
Thoughtful, ever flourishing and wild.